


Tree Trouble

by koboli



Category: SpongeBob SquarePants (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Karen Plankton and Spongebob teaming up, Nematodes, Sandy and Karen teaming up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 07:35:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21249746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koboli/pseuds/koboli
Summary: Sandy and Karen combine minds to help get Sandy out of serious trouble from an experiment.





	Tree Trouble

**Author's Note:**

> karen and plankton aren't married in this because i said so
> 
> also i love sandy

“Well, shoot,” Said Sandy as she wiped some dust off of her gloves and boots. “That was closer than a bull at a glue convention!” To really get a look at the damage she was talking about, the squirrel had to take a few large steps back.

Her beloved Tree no longer standing. A pile of splintered wood, broken belongings, and branches. She had been standing in the bathroom just moments before she heard an unfamiliar creaking. Upon investigating she found a Nematode, she put two and two together and high-tailed it out of her house. The foundations had been weakened, and chose that moment to completely give out.

Unharmed by the wreckage, her scientific equipment stands still running the tests she’d programmed it to run on some new fauna she’d come across recently. The specimen must have been housing a family of Nematodes. Too blinded by the prospect of a meal to realize they’d dry out without Ocean water, hopping out of the experiment tank, and doing their business before quietly passing away.

Sandy can’t feel too sympathetic, they destroyed her house!

A lifetime of scouting taught Sandy to always be prepared. And growing a new Tree ain’t no thing. The pests hadn’t survived long enough to entirely eat through her valuables. What wasn’t completely wrecked could be fixed. It would be time consuming, and frustrating, but she’s wrangled far worse. 

She clears what she can salvage out of the wreckage, buries the Nematodes. She needs advanced hardwear to dig the roots of the deceased Tree out of the ground, but she succeeded - pushed some dirt around, planted an acorn and patted herself on the back. “Nothing can stop this country girl!” She shouts.

One of her experiments is even focused around sped up growth in plant life! With a small flair of dramatics, she pulls out her latest concoction. It glows purple, and bubbles - unleashing a putrid smell. “The Essence of Manure,” Sandy says to herself, grinning. The scent was so awful, it even drove her to put on her Sea Suit. Glass is a blessing.

“Alright, little acorn, bottoms up!” She pours the entire test tube, and takes a few rather large steps back. 

Her tail twitches in anticipation.

She wants a place to sleep tonight…

The ground begins to shake and Sandy grins, steadying herself is easy. She plants her feet firmly in the grass. “Grow!!” She shouts. “GROOOOOW!!”

And so it does.

It’s a sapling, and suddenly, the base of the newly sprouted tree widens, and more branches sprout. Their first leaves fall, and just as suddenly, new blossoms appear. The taller it gets the more acorns appear - small, and misshapen. Sandy marvels at the effect, and soon the Tree is looking strong, and mighty. 

Sandy sighs in accomplishment. She’d have to clear out the insides while maintaining the structure, but the part that took the longest was already done!

As it grows taller than ever before, though, Sandy questions if ‘done’ was the right word to use.

“What in Tarnation.. That’s enough!!” She shouts, hoping to reason the mutation? “Stop it, you incredible advancement in botany, you!” The leaves brush the top of the treedome, and just as Sandy was fearing. Branches start bending in line with the dome - and Sandy realizes that instead of growing up and breaking through the glass, the Tree was conforming to the space. 

Which meant…. The Up that the tree was growing in was going to become Down, and Down is where _ she _is. She sees the branches are starting to cover the door and she doesn’t waste a moment abandoning everything and sprinting to the airlock.

A glance behind her reveals how thick the bark is becoming, how sturdy it is forming as it crawls across the glass dome. A mess of brown and green leaves lay on the ground, but the soil beneath them gives out as the roots grow larger, and soon all Sandy can see is wood..

She thanks Neptune her diving suit is already on. With all her might, she pulls the branches out of the way of the doorknob before everything got entangled. They started growing back without a pause though, and she grinds her teeth. With a Texas sized roar, she heaves a large portion of the mutant tree off the door, giving herself a brief moment to escape the deathtrap her home was becoming.

Metal rings out as she slams the door shut behind her, and she runs through the other front door faster than you can say “is it wrong to play god?”.

From a safe distance, Sandy Cheeks witnesses her Tree completely encompass all the space in the treedome. It even spits out a bit through the door, slowed down, but not stopping. Sandy imagines for a moment that it grows to the size of the entire ocean and her brain scampers away from panic as she tries to think of ways to stop it.

She has tons of ideas, ways to counteract the mutation. The materials she needs however, are crushed in an impenetrable fortress of Pure Texan Bred Treebark. 

“Dang nabbit.” She mutters to herself, and thinks about where she can get the items to scrap everything together when the most intelligent thought Sandy’s had all day comes to mind. 

Karen has a lab.

\--

Winded from how fast she ran, the squirrel has to take a moment to gather herself before approaching the entrance to the Chum Bucket. She knocks urgently. “You gotta let me in, it’s an emergency!!”

The door opens by itself- No, Plankton opens the door, looking irate. “Excuse me, some people are trying to SCHEME HERE.” He bellows as loud as he can, but Sandy rolls her eyes. She doesn’t have time to deal with Plankton’s showboating. 

“Not now, Plankton, I gotta borrow your lab!” Sandy says, stepping over the copepod and into the restaurant. 

Hopping up on Sandy’s shoulder, rather than running to keep up, Plankton knocks on the glass dome protecting Sandy’s head, “and you think I’m going to allow this... **why**?” 

“Oh, I’m not really askin’ you.” The squirrel informs him, amused, and leads herself to the back of the Chum Bucket where the action really happens.

In fact, the very moment that Sandy steps foot into the Lab a screen that was showing a rather intense game of solitaire blinked into a pixel smile. “Oh, hey there, Sandy!” Came Karen’s electronic voice, seemingly from the entire room. 

As much as Karen would proclaim that machines don’t feel anything, Sandy can’t help but always fixate on how happy Karen sounds to see her. She smiles back, just as Plankton starts grousing in her ear about how it’s HIS lab and so it’s HIS decision whether the squirrel gets to mess with HIS stuff-- and after a while where he won’t let Sandy get a word in edgewise, Karen extends an arm and plucks him off of her shoulder, and then lets that arm keep extending all the way out of the Chum Bucket.

“I’ll see you at dinner, Plankton!” She shouts out the door, and then her arm zips back to her side. There’s a shriek, and then a begrudging mumble of acceptance, and Sandy looks to where Karen has rolled near her, with her arms crossed and a question mark on her screen.

“What, your lab at home not good enough for ya all of the sudden?” She asks,

  


“There ain’t no you back home.” Sandy says with a weak laugh, partially to counter Karen’s dry tone, and partially in truth. Karen’s screen fizzles slightly, but Sandy misses it. “But I got a real problem growin’ back home.” She says, already running to gather the materials from Plankton and Karen’s impressive stock. “And I mean _ really _ growin’.” She fixes Karen with a wide eyed look to prove her point.

Then, she dives into a thorough explanation of what she needs to counteract the growth mutation the Acorn absorbed. Karen processed everything quickly, and even gave a few tips on things she could cut out of the formula to make the process go faster. Plankton may claim the lab is his, but it’s always been maintained by Karen, and she knows the place much better than he ever could. 

With Sandy and Karen working together, they finish in two shakes of a cow’s tail. Sandy says as much, which gets a small laugh out of Karen. Sandy’s house might be destroyed, but it’s hard to feel bad after hearing a beautiful chime like that.

Together, they rush out of the Chum Bucket, over the sand hills over to the tangle of wood that was once the Treedome. 

The glass had since shattered, and the Tree was growing every which way. She hopped on Karen and they rolled around the radius of the thing - to find that it was mighty close to Spongebob’s house a similar fate to hers at the beginning of this mess. Still rolling, she points to a branch extending tall enough she can climb on. 

Karen, seeing the direction, speeds up, rolls in close, and then tosses Sandy up on the branch. The squirrel wasn’t expecting that much help, but she catches herself with two feet on the branch, and flashes Karen a thumbs up.

She starts climbing upward - the Tree from a distance looks more like an Urchin than anything else. Sandy wants to get as close to inside the center as she can - to find the heart of the Tree. Theoretically, pouring the new solution there would be a key to ending her mistake.

Her diving suit is holding her down, as much as having pockets is a major boon. She needs to go faster, so she shakes the suit off - it sinks into a tangle of branches and gets enveloped in the wood. The bottle is held tightly in the curl of her tail, and she uses her natural born talent as a climber to get to the very top of the mass. 

The ocean is more turbulent the higher you go, and Sandy has to really hold on to not have the current carry her away. She tries pouring a bit of the serum on an outermost branch, and it withers away, but only that branch, until it reached a connecting mass and nothing happened. She’d have to make the amount she had count at the best possible place.

She has to go inside.

She hears static coming through her helmet, her rarely used communicator coming to life. “If you’re thinking about going in there, Cheeks, I would think again.” It’s Karen, voice comforting if tone abrasive. Or maybe it’s worry? “I’ve been scanning the way your Mutation grows, and 70% of it’s energy is spent compressing, and moving the older branches within.”

It’s not exactly reassuring. But Sandy is nothing if not confident. She huffs a laugh, knowing Karen will hear her.

“There is probably another way to stop it.” Karen states.

Sandy looks to where a branch spears through the innocent pineapple home. Gary could be in there. The squirrel doesn’t want to imagine what she’d do if something actually got hurt from her experiment. 

“Thank you, Karen.” Sandy says genuinely, even though the computer has said nothing optimistic. The fact that she reached out was enough for Sandy in that moment.

There’s a pause before Sandy hears. “You got this, girl.” rattle around in her helmet, and she smirks. With a shout, she slinks downward into the tangle.

She chops the foliage trying to constrict her away. It’s like being attacked from all sides, being closed in on by walls on every plane of existence. Sandy’s no wet blanket, though, and she spins through the branches like a hacksaw. A similar sound even ringing throughout the ocean to drive home the effect.

The dome of her helmet is getting thoroughly scratched. She will admit to herself, damage to her personal helmet wasn’t something she accounted for. There’s no time to worry, though, and summons all her personal stamina and adrenaline to force her way through the very mistake she wrought to it’s heart. 

The largest circumference she’s seen out of all the branches and possible roots so far. It creaked with every move it made, thrumming with energy and only one way to spend it. As Sandy had bellowed mere hours ago, it must Grow.. it must…….--

Sandy dumps the entire content in her container on what she hopes and prays is truly the root of the mutation. It sizzles against the wood, any splash back makes her fur tingle, but she is otherwise unharmed by the substance. 

The churning and twisting of branches grinds to a halt - very literally grinding and shaving itself into pieces. The sound of creaking branches stops echoing around the scientist from every direction. 

“By Neptune’s Laptop.. You did it Sandy! It’s completely stopped! Fantastic!” Karen sings through her speakers. 

Pride and something mushy wells up in Sandy’s chest, and she sighs through a very wide smile. She’s always been pretty good at fixing her own messes, not just other peoples’. She allows herself to breathe without a metaphorical ball of stress blocking her lungs. What she just did was outlandishly dangerous, but she’s survived.

Now she just has to get out…

Sandy tries to move her limbs, and finds they crumble right through some of the weaker branches. 

In that moment, the entire structure loses its shape - and much like her original Tree weakened by Nematodes - the mutated bundle crushes down into a disheveled pile. One which Sandy very suddenly finds herself on the bottom of.

She hears Karen’s panicked shouts echo in her helmet, and Sandy finds herself answering with a scream of her own as a particularly heavy piece of deadwood falls on her left leg and tail. The more the wood decays, the more water it absorbs. It’s agonizing, but Sandy uses her arms and free leg and is able to slowly push it off. The damage is done, and she whimpers as she curls around her limbs. 

“Medic.” She whimpers, and as much as she fights it the pain overwhelms her senses and she passes out.

…

Karen immediately faxes emergency services, after Sandy’s cry for help. Her processors feel like they’re spinning a mile a minute, but Karen is able to compartmentalize it into a megabyte of data. “Sandy are you with me?” She asks, to no response, but she can hear the soft wheeze of her mammalian lungs. “I’m gonna get you out of there,” She reassures unaware ears - and rolls toward the Chum Bucket.

Then, takes a sharp turn towards the Krusty Krab. The doors slam open as she rolls exceedingly fast through them. Right to where Eugene Krabs is clutching a defeated looking Sheldon J. Plankton. She snatches her roommate, then continues on into the Kitchen.

Spongebob stops whistling, a little startled at the entrance. A small part of Karen’s programming urges her to take a Patty right off the grill. She reaches her free hand out and instead grabs the frycook himself. “Sorry, buster, I’m gonna borrow you for a minute.” She says, unapologetically. 

"Okidokie!" The sponge answers happy-go-luckily. 

Wasting no more time, she zooms back out the front entrance. She passes Mr. Krabs, who angrily yells, “Get back here with me Employee-r!!” He doesn’t give chase, though, and instead turns to his other employee who’s yet to do anything even during Plankton’s attack. “Mr. Squidward, after that CPU!! That’s an order!!”

“No,” Squidward responds - and that’s all Karen hears from them, because she’s out the door. She explains in curt words what’s happening to Plankton and Spongebob and rolls over more hills to the pile of soaked rotting wood that was keeping her clearly injured friend trapped.

“We have to save her!!” Spongebob cries, eyes actually tearing up from Karen’s description of the events and worry for his friend.

Plankton however, is still stinging from the embarrassment Krabs just dished him, and says mockingly, “Whatever plan you THINK is going to work, probably ain’t likely, sister.”

Karen feels her fans kick in as more heat builds up in her processors. She’s been monitoring Sandy - broadcasting everything she says as well - only to thankfully steady breathing. “Unlike _you,_ **I** am asking for help, peabrain.” Karen answers flatly.

They’re close to the wreckage which hasn’t seemed to diminish in size, even as some wood floats away - taken with the current. Karen immediately scans it’s infrastructure, and it’s not looking good. She knows the heavier things will eventually gravitate down and fall through the weaker branches that hadn’t disintegrated. Karen doesn’t want to consider the chances of more things falling on Sandy, but she’s a computer and the calculations come naturally.

“How can we help..?” Spongebob clenches his fists, ignores that he’s sniffling, instead feeling fired up to help save one of his close friends who risked her life for his house.

Karen rolls to a stop and drops the men on the ground. She rolls back and forth like a drill sergeant and explains in great detail how she wants Plankton to use size to his advantage and climb through the gaps in the wood. Karen, using her scanners, will direct Plankton to Sandy.

He is to have a cord wrapped around him to pull him out if he gets stuck, but more importantly, to tug Spongebob into where he is. Karen rationalizes that Spongebob wouldn’t be able to actually maneuver himself through the wood, but with enough strength could be dragged through. 

“... If you can’t manage it, big guy, you’ll have to wake up Sandy.”

There’s not even a moment given to think over the plan before the shortest of their party rolled his eye. “Ugh! No!” 

Karen crosses her arms, not wanting to prolong anymore time, but unable to stop the buzz of annoyance toward her ex-husband. “You’re _ not _going to wake her up?”

“I’m not doing** any** of it!” Plankton stomps his foot, then points dramatically at Karen. “You want me to risk being crushed into a Plankton Pancake for your little girlfriend, and I am not having it!!” 

Spongebob picks Plankton up gently, causing the restaurant owner to yell profanities at the frycook, which get muffled as Spongebob cups Plankton inside his hands. “What are we gonna do once I’m inside??” 

While she’s yet to make any expressions appear on her face throughout her description of her plan, she sounds extremely self assured, likely from her plan being statistically sound, but it’s a good feeling. Like when she hangs out with Mrs. Puff and Sandy and feels proud to be herself. “The Fire Department will arrive, and I will direct them to hose the pile - I’m 97% certain that you will absorb the water, expanding enough to jostle the cluster free.”

Plankton squeezes his head through a small gap in Spongebob’s makeshift cage. “Why not just wait for them to axe it all down?” 

It’s something she has considered, and is certain that the foundation wouldn’t be able to handle such physical forces without possibly unleashing something on Sandy, buried so far in the center. Karen feels her vocalization banks far away, and as she leans her screen closer to the man who essentially gave her sentience her voice cracks. “Sheldon… Please.”

Plankton’s eyebrow furrows, struck silent by what could only be described as the emotion in Karen’s voice. He glances behind him, to the pile, considers the plan, and sheepishly looks back to his ex-wife… they somehow parted on goodterms…… He can’t keep letting his other failures get in the way of that.

“Fine.” His attempt at sounding grouchy comes off a bit emotionally shaken, but neither Karen or Spongebob say anything. The three of them get to work, quickly, but extremely functionally.

“Hang in there, Bushy-Tushy…” Karen directs to the still unconscious squirrel through her microphone. “We’ve got’cha.”

\--

Sandy shudders into consciousness in the back of the ambulance. She doesn’t speak, or groan, just hangs in the moment. The ride isn’t particularly wild, but she’s jostled none the less. One particular sharp turns makes her very aware of the pain in her leg - and the fact that she couldn’t at all feel her tail.

She whimpers, and clenches her hands - then realizes one of her fists aren’t empty. She’s clutching onto something metal, yet warm - like a phone running too many apps. The hand is holding her back gently, but the presence feels so solid to her… She squints open an eye - stunned for a moment at the stark bright lights. She blinks, and through her scratched up diving helmet she can see Karen. She almost mistakes her for a life-support monitor, but Sandy knows better.

She smiles, and before her eye slips shut, she sees a beautiful smile appear where a horizontal line once sat across the AI’s face. 

“I’ve got you, Sandy,” Karen’s voice crackles through the white noise of the ambulance.

Sandy Cheeks has lost a lot today, however - she can’t help but consider that maybe she’s gained something. “I know,” she whispers fondly - giving the metallic hand a squeeze not influenced by pain before letting the painkillers lull her back to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope y'all liked it! i was really excited to post karendy that i didn't do much editing or anything, it's probably obvious haaaa! but tell me what you thought!! 
> 
> if anything, i want to inspire more karen/sandy works!!


End file.
